Conservatism, the Right Wing, and the Far Right: A Guide to Archives

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

Introduction

Archival Collections

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Index of Archives by Locations

Index

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Copyright

"In the interest of knowledge, then, we have every reason to remember the past as fully as we can and to realize that its continued existence in mind is positively a determinant of present actions."

(Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences1)

"The conscious present is an awareness of the past."

(T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"2)

"For history, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do."

(James Baldwin, "The White Man's Guilt"3)

"Temporal bandwidth" is the width of your present, your now. It is the familiar "At" considered as a dependent variable. The more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. But the narrower your sense of Now, the more tenuous you are.

(Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow4)

"We are forgetting our past faster with each passing year."

(Jean-Baptiste Michel et al.5)

Historians, legal researchers, and others dependent on archives for information and knowledge have increasingly recognized the important role of archivists.6 Over the last ten to fifteen years, an "archival turn" in history, literature, anthropology, and the humanities and social sciences in general has transformed archives from sites of research into objects of enquiry in their own right. Archives have come to be seen not as neutral repositories of sources but as historically constructed tools of power relations, deeply embedded in changing social and cultural contexts.7 Areas of study include investigations of memory practices; representation of cultural minorities in the historical record; the role of curatorial voice, including the evolving processes of selection, ordering, and usage; human rights and access to documentation.8 With the "archival turn" has come the recognition of the need for historians to engage "with the limits and possibilities of the archive as a site of knowledge production, an arbiter of truth, and a mechanism for shaping narratives of history."9 The same recognition is at work in other disciplines. In American literary history, for example, newly-unearthed documents have heralded "revisions in canons, new understandings of genres, and emerging, competing narratives."10

As archives have assumed a more important role in contemporary scholarship, the need for access to the archives has increased. The "digital revolution" and the existence of electronic finding aids, many of which have been created, uploaded and revised--sometimes frequently--in the last few years, have done much to expand access. Before the development of the internet and the creation of online finding aids, historians depended on printed bibliographic guides, references in secondary sources, suggestions from colleagues, suggestions from archivists, and accession lists in historical journals. Of these sources of information, references in secondary sources were by far the most useful.11 A survey conducted by Michael E. Stevens in 1977 on the number of archives visited by responding historians in the previous five years found that nearly half of the sample visited more than five research institutions during the five-year period. It is clear that historians consult many more archives now, partly because information about the archives, accessed especially through online finding aids, is so much more readily available. Jennifer Rutner and Roger C. Schonfeld, surveying another group of historians in 2010, wrote that historians "desire to have finding aids for all archival collections online."12 The historians expressed the further "desire to have these finding aids collocated for centralized searching."13

The move towards online finding aids began in the 1990s. As of February 2000, approximately 8 percent of repositories listed at the 'Repositories of Primary Resources' website had mounted at least four full finding aids on the Web.14 In a 2004 survey, it was found that most archives surveyed had no more than 10 percent or less of their holdings described online. In a 2010 paper, Christopher J. Prom found that among surveyed institutions "the 'average' institution makes descriptive information at any level of completeness available on the Internet for a paltry 50% of its processed collections and 15% of its unprocessed collections."15 As of the summer of 2010 only 20% of the collections of the Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) at the University of Oregon Libraries were discoverable online either in the form of a MARC record in the library catalog or an EAD finding aid in Northwest Digital Archives (NWDA).16 Many finding aids remain in paper form only for consultation at the archives in question and may or may not be listed on the websites of the libraries or archives in question. Many collections do not have finding aids. "Libraries, archives, and cultural institutions hold millions of items that have never been adequately described. This represents a staggering volume of items of potentially substantive intellectual value that are unknown and inaccessible to scholars."17 There are hundreds, probably thousands, of unprocessed political collections in repositories across the United States.18 These numbers indicate that, while much work has been done to upload finding aids, much remains to be done.

With online finding aids for archival collections now numbering in the tens of thousands, it is now possible to locate archives and compile a guide to their holdings in a way that would have been out of the question a few years ago.19 Why a printed guide to archives whose finding aids are already available online? Finding aids open up the contents of archives and collections. At the same time, items tend to get buried in finding aids.20 One reason for this is that finding aids tend to be produced by the institution holding the archive and tend not to be integrated into a network that extends beyond the institution or beyond a state or regional system. On the other hand, a search across finding aids at an institutional search engine may produce too many returns when, instead, a principle of selection is needed. For example, the National Archives (UK) search engine21 returns 514 results for Oswald Mosley. The Eisenhower Library alone lists hundreds of finding aids on its website.22 In the face of this abundance of material, the most relevant items may get lost. Finding aids, moreover, are being added to the internet faster than it is possible to locate them. Keyword searches on a general internet search engine may cast a wide net for a specific topic and may gather more material than is needed, while at the same time casting a narrow net that will miss many related topics.

The present work is an attempt to facilitate the use of archives in the area of conservatism, the right wing, and the extreme right by pulling together relevant archival materials from online finding aids into a fully-indexed master list. It is an effort to network the finding aids. Although it is one step removed from the finding aids that comprise almost all of the material described, it is hoped that this "finding aid of finding aids" will at the same time bring a wider spectrum of material within view of the reader. Furthermore, all mentions of a person, topic, or organization can be checked in an instant in the index. Also, this guide may also serve as a pointer to unprocessed collections or to collections unknown to the compiler which relate to subjects covered in the guide. For example, reference is made to a handful of state or local Associations Opposed to Woman Suffrage. No doubt there were many similar organizations operating in other states–perhaps in all the states–whose records or publications remain to be publicized or brought to light.

In my selection of archives and collections related to the subject at hand, I have attempted to be as broadly representative as possible. Collections have been selected for one or more of a number of factors, including the size, thematic range, or importance of the collections or individual items in the collections; their geographical diversity; their similarities or links to other listed collections; and the usefulness of the corresponding finding aid. An archive is more likely to be listed if it contains material which dramatizes a conflict, particularly of the "pro"/"anti-" kind. Thus, preference has been given to collections which address one or both sides of divisive or hot-button issues, such as pro-choice or anti-choice (pro-life), compulsory unionism or voluntary unionism, praise and criticism of the New Deal (and--more generally--the administrative state), constitutionalism versus governmental centralization and socialism (or, as in the title of one of Joseph P. Kamp's pamphlets, "Bureaucratic regimentation vs. constitutional government"), free enterprise or government intervention, national sovereignty or states rights, regionalism or nationalism, segregation or desegregation/civil rights, isolationism or interventionism/internationalism, nationalism or cosmopolitanism, women's suffrage or anti-women's suffrage, pro- and anti-immigration, Equal Rights Amendment support and opposition, gay rights or traditional marriage, and Americanism versus Communism.23 Other divisive issues include disputes with science (evolution, human equality, vaccination, and climate change) as well as child labor.

It is beyond the scope of this introduction to offer working definitions of the terms embodied in the title of the guide. It is, in fact, likely that, for each of the terms "conservatism," "right wing," and "extreme right," there are as many definitions as there are for the term "terrorism," for which more than 100 have been catalogued.24 It has been stated that "There is little uniformity in how scholars characterize the right in modern Western societies."25 Michael Whine describes the definitional problem as "a continuing problem for researchers of the far right."26 Especially today in the United States, when "the mainstream Republican Party has become ideologically extreme," the distinctions between mainstream conservatism and extremism are blurred beyond recognition.27 For purposes of this guide, however, the right may be characterized broadly as any political ideology or expression generally considered to be to the right of center as to any particular issue or range of issues. It is broad enough to encompass everything from the American nativist movement of the 1830s and 1840s to the Tea Party movement of recent years; from Russian right-wing periodicals of the 1870s to their counterparts in the 1990s and early 2000s; from the Old Right to the New Right; and from traditional conservatism to the extreme anti-Semitic right. As such, the field is practically inexhaustible. No single archive, no matter how large and impressive, covers all aspects of the right; but considered together, the archives give a wonderfully comprehensive view of the major themes and concerns of the right. The cumulative index to this volume gives an idea of the full range of materials held by archival collections. Neither is an attempt is made to define "archive" other than through the recognition, as reflected in the numbered entries, that archives include collections of materials in all media, including digital-only and born-digital materials.

Uniting many (though by no means all) figures of the right is a viewpoint, expressed in words or actions, that stands in opposition to proposed, established, or evolving changes in social behavior, attitudes, or institutions. Whatever differences they may otherwise have, conservatives and right-wing extremists stand opposed to something. As Ivan Zoltan Denes writes, "While modern liberalism posited a relatively independent and specific value system, conservatism was primarily negative in nature: it did not so much assert as deny."28 As evidence of this, the present guide records no fewer than a thousand different examples of oppositional viewpoints, which are listed in the index under "anti-," followed by the object of opprobrium. Not all of these examples characterize the right (anti-Fascism being one of many counter-examples); but the vast majority of them do. Among the better-known examples are anti-abortion, anti-Communism, anti-desegregation, and anti-United Nations. In 1962, Walter D. Wagoner attributed this insistent negativism to a desire for an idyllic past:

One of the curses of this strife is that it is many fights: not only against communism, but how to fight communism, what means are justifiable in the anti-communist crusade, and, indeed, serious debate whether anti-communism is the main motivation of these Red Raiders. The American Right Wing makes it more than clear that there are many issues hidden behind the smokescreen of anti-communism. Billy James Hargis, Dr. Fred Schwarz, Carl McIntire, General Walker, Admiral Crommelin, John Kasper, Robert (John Birch) Welch, Edgar Bundy, William Buckley, and the other leaders of these anti-democratic reactionaries can be likened to a destroyer flotilla, fortunately without a single attack pattern, which in its offensive against the communist fleet lays down a smoke screen of slogans, war cries, and invective. Behind this smoke screen are landing craft of all sizes and shapes: no income tax, no United Nations, no NAACP, no foreign aid, no National Council of Churches, no National Education Association, no Harvard, no NATO, no Fifth Amendment, no Justice Warren, no Unions, no Social Security, etc., etc. This is why this movement is literally reactionary. It is almost one hundred per cent negative, desiring to return to some pre-McKinley state of bliss.29

In 1975, Kirkpatrick Sale described the rise of George Wallace as an example of a "broad adversarianism, a being-against. Wallace has no real policies, plans, or platforms, and no one expects them of him; it is sufficient that he is agin and gathers unto him others who are agin, agin the blacks, the intellectuals, the bureaucrats, the students, the journalists, the liberals, the outsiders, the Communists, the changers, above all, agin the Yankee establishment."30 Matthew Continetti sees a line from Wallace to Donald Trump, whose "antagonism toward the Eastern establishment is obvious."31

Many of the threats as perceived by the American right go to the heart of their understanding of what America is, or was, or should be. Rising to prominence in various times and places are the perceived threats to de-Americanize (or foreignize, colonize, invade, alienize, or Balkanize) America (immigration), to Catholicize America (Catholic immigration), to Judaize America (predominance of Jews in the Roosevelt administration), to feminize America (women's suffrage, gay rights), to federalize and bureaucratize America (New Deal), to sovietize (or communize or enslave) America (Communism, socialism), to internationalize America (pluralism, multiculturalism, modernism, world government, World Court, United Nations), to mass medicate or mass narcotize America (brainwashing, drugs, fluoridation of water, mental health treatment), to poison America (fluoridation, adulteration or irradiation of food, vaccination), to mongrelize America (desegregation), and to secularize or de-Christianize America (the school prayer issue). Many of the collections described in this guide embody these dramatized conflicts.

It should not be assumed that a listing for a collection implies that the collection is principally devoted to right-wing materials. In many cases, the description lists only those items from a collection which are most relevant to the subject of this guide. Many individuals and organizations, for example, have carried on correspondence with public figures of both the left and right; for such collections, only the "rightist" material, or material commenting on the right, is summarized. Perhaps surprisingly, the papers and records of many leftist, socialist, and feminist persons and organizations are also included and are often among the most useful. It may be true, as Tanya Zanish-Belcher and Kären M. Mason write, that "women's archives [i.e., archival repositories] today may have a feminist bias and may fail to document groups that do not share these values or who actively oppose these values, such as right-wing organizations or right-to-life groups."32 As an institutional policy, many repositories may indeed choose not to collect representative material from both sides of an issue; in any event, feminist groups, and leftist organizations in general, have often collected material of, or about, their counterparts at the other end of the political spectrum. As John Earl Haynes writes, "Creating background files on one's opponents is a normal action by any institution or movement engaged in an ideological and organizational struggle."33 This activity of documenting the groups which oppose them has served the political or other interests of the organizations which have collected the material. For example, Planned Parenthood has studied cassette tapes featuring an anti-abortion group; by studying the arguments of the opposition, Planned Parenthood felt that it could better respond in the media.34 In the UK, left-leaning groups surveyed anti-immigrationists for the purposes of information-gathering.35 As a result of this common collecting practice by groups on the left, a number of leftist collections are included in the present guide. This tactic is not exclusive to the left, as those on the right have done the same thing. For example, "[a] small portion of the [Paul O. Peters] collection is devoted to left-wing materials gathered by Peters so that he might better understand his opposition."36 Likewise, the Republican Opposition Research Group collected materials on its Democratic opponents. Also, some collections have reports based on surveillance or infiltration of their political counterparts. Examples are the California Surveillance Collection, the Fight for Freedom Committee Records, the Carl Jacobson Collection of Hollywood Anti-Nazi League Records, the Florence Mendheim Collection, the Hollis Mosher papers, News Research Service typescript, the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League Papers, the Joseph Roos Papers, and the Abraham Shoenfeld Papers. Numerous collections of ACLU and FBI records, as well as civil rights, labor, LGBT, Jewish, and women's groups collections, further document the right, often from an oppositional viewpoint. Those who have been attacked by the right--from the women's suffrage groups of the 1910s and the pacifist groups of the 1920s to the League of Women Voters and other ERA advocates of the 1970s and 1980s, to the gay rights and Planned Parenthood groups and the National Organization for Women of recent years--have frequently collected documentation on their opponents and the attacks waged by them, as well as their answers to the attacks. At the same time, those on the right have collected material regarding the left. Where individuals or organizations have created a cause or rallying cry or lightning rod for the right wing--figures such as Harry Dexter White, Owen Lattimore, or Alger Hiss, and organizations such as the Institute of Pacific Relations--materials relating to them have also been included.

For considerations of space, the emphasis of the guide is on the specific contents of the collections as opposed to library hours and policies. More than 4000 archives and collections in more than twenty countries are described in the guide. Countries represented include Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The majority of the collections consist of personal papers and collections, as well as institutional, organizational, and corporate records. Included are papers or records of conservative or right wing politicians, diplomats, journalists, editors, ministers, military officers, economists, historians, political scientists, anthropologists, think tanks, right-wing committees, lobbying or pressure groups, political parties, etc. Besides collections of personal and institutional papers, the list includes archives of right-wing periodicals and other publications, including those in the Japanese, Polish, Romanian, and Russian languages; collections of pamphlets, ephemera, posters, vertical files, scrapbooks, and press cuttings; newspaper indexes; oral histories; sheet music; library-accessible commercial or noncommercial databases; digital collections and exhibitions; archived web sites; and microfilm and microfiche collections with right-wing material. Some of the archives are collections of photographs, newspaper art, cartoons, sound recordings, video, kinescopes, films, political commercials, newsreels, and television programs. Included are the photographic morgues of the Afro-American Newspaper (along with clippings), Amsterdam News, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Baltimore News American (along with clippings), Boston Herald-Traveler, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Chicago Defender, Daily Worker and Daily World (New York), Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Look Magazine, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Examiner, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Los Angeles Times, Memphis Press-Scimitar (along with clippings), Miami News, The New Leader, New York Journal-American, the Paris bureau of the New York Times, New York World Telegram & Sun, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin (along with clippings), Rocky Mountain News (Denver) (along with clippings), St. Louis Globe-Democrat (along with clippings), San Antonio Express-News, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, Toronto Star, Toronto Telegram, and Washington Star (along with clippings). Clippings files include the morgues of the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Journal American, and the New York Times, and the research archive of Newsweek (all at the University of Texas at Austin). Digital newspaper databases are included where the indexed newspapers contain much material pertaining to the right-wing. This is especially true of African-American and Jewish newspapers. Examples are the Jewish Criterion, the American Jewish Outlook, the Jewish Chronicle, the Memphis World, The Southern Israelite, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). Also included are several online newspaper indexes – the indexes without the articles—such as the Arkansas Gazette and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Raleigh News & Observer, and the San Antonio Register.

Archival research can supply information that can be obtained in no other way. For social historians and other researchers, marginal and alternative movements "are the [authentic] expressions of the ideas and feelings of a segment of society." As such, these organizations and causes, which "include right-wing, racist organizations, radical or militant religious groups or sects, and nationalist or other terrorist organizations," are important for an understanding of the period in question.37 As interest in studies of the right increases, the need for a guide to archives has grown. Right-wing and other alternative movements have been studied using the traditional ways of conducting research in the social sciences: fieldwork, surveys, case studies, interviews and correspondence, data mining and analysis, website monitoring, reviews of published and unpublished literature and videos, etc. Often overlooked in the research process, however, is archival research. One possible reason for this relative neglect springs to mind: there is no comprehensive guide to archival collections of right-wing material. Another reason is that right wing publications are in general scarce, difficult to locate, and little known by researchers.38